Navigating the New World of SharePoint Online, Office 365 and On-Premises

This is just one entry in a series of articles that cover a keynote presentation I delivered in April 2014 at the SPTechCon conference in San Francisco, CA. The first article in the series below sets the stage and explains what the series is about. All articles in the series are meant to be read in order, but hey… it’s your browser and mouse… click what interests you!

In April I had the honor of being a keynote speaker at the SPTechCon conference in San Francisco. The title of my keynote was Navigating the New World of SharePoint Online, Office 365 and On-Premises. The reason I picked this topic was that I have been personally a bit frustrated by all the talk and debating about on-prem SharePoint or Office 365 hosted SharePoint, which one is the right one to use, how people should approach it, where Microsoft was going... all that stuff.

I haven't been much of a fan of how Microsoft has been trying to hold their customer's hands to show them where they were going, both Microsoft and the customer, with SharePoint. So in my keynote I decided to throw it out there and just provide my two cents and make a presentation out of the message and conversation I have been having with my customers. I've you've seen me present before, you know I'm generally not one to mix words or be all "sales-y"... I like to speak it like it is and how I see it. That's what I did in this keynote. David Rubinstein, who's one of the primary organizers behind SPTechCon wrote about the keynote in SPTechWeb - Where Should you be with SharePoint? article.

After the keynote I was taken back by how many people came up to me afterwards saying how refreshing it was to hear my approach and message. Administrators, developers, employees from independent software vendors (ISV's), end users, business decision makers (BDMs) and the media... I was really not expecting that overwhelming positive feedback on my keynote... it's also the first time that a few ISV's and peers even requested copies of my slides after the event.

So I got to thinking after a few asked if they could see the recording (of which there is not one, sorry!) that I should have a blog post that I can point people to when they ask for my thoughts as I've done this before on the topic of InfoPath, the SharePoint CSOM vs REST API and the SharePoint App Model. However I quickly realized this isn't going to be just one single post... it's a series!

I've broken my keynote down into a few different themes but the whole thing tells the story I told in the keynote. The following articles are meant to be read in order, but each one could stand on it's own. What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments on each article!

One more thing... as you read through this you'll see that I start out with what may seem like I'm doing a bit of Microsoft / Office 365 bashing... keep reading. If you read the first part and don't continue, you'll totally miss my point!